The Future of Sino-Africa Relations

African Foreign Policy - Part 2

This is the second of three posts on African foreign policy under multipolarity. The first post outlines what African countries should prioritize as they engage the world; this post looks at how China ought to rethink its Africa Policy moving forward; and the third examines potential opportunities to improve US (and Western) Africa Policy.

I: Enabling Friends’ Bad Habits

As The Economist once put it, some countries get a loan to build a railway, but Kenya might have built a railway to get a loan. Kenya’s new 700km standard gauge railway (SGR) cost $4.7b to build. It was also wildly overpriced and poorly thought out. Kenyan analysts’ informed protestations were roundly ignored. Until recently the contrac It later turned out that the line can only be commercially viable if extended through Uganda to Rwanda (see map below). Despite the Kenyan government’s coaxing of haulers away from the roads, the rail traffic is not enough to service the loan.

Both Uganda and Rwanda have yet to fully co…